WINTERSET, Iowa — Former Vice President Joe Biden floated the possibility of four different women he may pick as his running mate should he win the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, including President Trump’s former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
Biden was asked by a participant Friday evening at a town hall in Winterset, Iowa, whom he would choose as his vice president and responded by saying he would make his administration resemble the country in terms of its racial and gender composition.
He then proceeded to name a number of potential choices for vice president, including former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams of Georgia, New Hampshire Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, and even Yates.
“Not just people who are running. I could start naming people, but the press would think that was who I picked if I were the nominee. But there’s an incredible number of people,” Biden said. “The former assistant attorney general who got fired who was just in Delaware. The leader of the, uh, the woman who should’ve been the governor of Georgia, the African American woman … the two senators from the state of New Hampshire. I mean, there’s an enormous number of qualified people.”
Biden said none of the choices were definitive and cautioned the press from making any assumptions about his answer.
Yates, 59, was fired from the Justice Department on Jan. 30, 2017. She refused to enforce the Trump administration’s travel ban order while briefly heading the Justice Department as the president’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, awaited confirmation.
She had been deputy attorney general during the final two years of the Obama administration and ascended to acting attorney general once former President Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, resigned upon Trump’s inauguration.
Her 10-day tenure was dominated by her warnings about then-national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, whose contacts with foreign government officials, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, led her to fear he may be compromised.
Yates later told a Senate committee she was concerned Flynn might have violated the Logan Act, an archaic law prohibiting private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments. Flynn eventually pleaded guilty for misleading investigators about his discussions with the Russian Ambassador, although the new legal team he brought on this summer has relentlessly criticized the handling of Flynn’s investigation by the DOJ and FBI.
Yates could soon find herself the subject of criticism from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his highly-anticipated report on abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI.
From her key perch at the DOJ, Yates signed off on the first FISA warrant application against Trump associate Carter Page in October 2016 and also approved the first warrant renewal in January 2017 prior to being fired by Trump.
Former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson described to lawmakers in 2018 the “unusual” way the first surveillance request targeting Page was handled by top leadership at the DOJ and FBI. She specifically named Yates, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI General Counsel James Baker. Because the FISA application had already been approved at such high levels, Anderson said she did not look at the Page FISA application with much skepticism.
“I wouldn’t view it as my role to second-guess that substantive approval that had already been given by the Deputy Director [McCabe] and by the Deputy Attorney General [Yates] in this particular instance,” she said.
Yates was eventually fired, not because of her involvement in the Flynn affair, but following her statement that the Justice Department under her leadership would not enforce Trump’s executive order temporarily banning any immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Trump’s executive order was issued on Jan. 27, 2017, and that same day Yates said that the Justice Department would not be enforcing it.
“My responsibility is to ensure that the position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts,” Yates wrote. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful.”
She added, “Consequently, for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.”
Trump fired her three days later.
Yates was praised for her decision by a number of Obama holdovers inside the Justice Department at the time, including Mueller “pitbull” Andrew Weissman, who emailed her, “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.” Weissman went on to be Mueller’s right-hand man when the special counsel investigation was launched in May 2017 following the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey.
Yates later further explained her reasons for refusing to enforce Trump’s order, saying, “I came ultimately to the conclusion that our defending this travel ban would require me to send lawyers of the Justice Department to court to say this ban had nothing to do with religion — it was all based on national security, nothing to do with religion.”
Throughout the episode, she portrayed herself publicly as a nonpolitical figure. Georgia Democrats courted her to run for governor in 2018 or Senate in 2020, but she declined both times.
